Impact (6 page)

He sat a while and looked around.

Fierce sun.

Endless dunes.

No trace of
Liberty Bell
or its crew. No chutes, no wreckage.

Oppressive solitude. No roads. No pylons. No sign humanity ever walked the earth.

Cupped hands:

‘Hey. Anyone?’

The desert sucked all power from his voice, made him sound weak and small.

‘Anyone hear me?’

His helmet lay at the foot of the dune. He slid down the gradient and picked it up. The composite crown had been split by a massive impact. The padded interior was crusted with blood. Something gelatinous smeared across the cracked visor. He touched and sniffed, then gagged as he realised the tips of his fingers were wet with the remains of his eyeball.

Head-spinning nausea. He threw the helmet aside and sat head in hands.

One eye. He would never fly again. Desk job or discharge. Next time he filled out a form he would reach DISABILITIES, and instead of ticking NONE, he would have to specify PARTIALLY SIGHTED.

Fuck it. The world was falling apart. He’d watched it on TV. Safely garrisoned behind concertina wire and HESCO baskets at Andrews AFB. Big plasma in the canteen. Every news outlet live-streaming Armageddon. Crowds of infected charging Humvee roadblocks with demented aggression, barely slowing as .50 cal rounds blew holes in their flesh. Channel surfing montage: tent cities, corpse-pyres, cities under martial law.

One by one stations went off air, cellphone signals died, and grieving base personnel were left to picture dead family members bulldozed into a grave-trench, bedsheet-shrouded bodies doused with quicklime or gasoline.

There would be no desk jobs, no carefully worded résumés. A post-pandemic interview would involve a guy trying to plead his way into a barricaded community:
‘Are you one more useless mouth to feed, or do you have a skill?’
Hancock had basic EMT training and could field-strip/reassemble/function-check an AR-15 in forty seconds. In this new, brutal world, that made him bad-ass ronin. The new American stone age. Cave clans warring over canned food. Folks would offer everything they had – booze, women – to live under his protection.

Crush this reverie. Face the here-and-now.

Better bandage the wound. Ensure his eye socket was kept free of dust.

A rudimentary first-aid kit in a pocket of his vest. He tore open the pouch. Gauze dressing folded into a pad and pressed to the vacant socket. He held the dressing in place with a cross of micropore tape.

Better shield his head from the unrelenting, blowtorch intensity of the sun.

The chute lay spread over a nearby dune. He strode towards it.

Headrush. The world tilted sideways and smacked him in the face. He got to his feet, stood and picked his way slow and careful, swayed like he was crossing the deck of a storm-tossed ship.

He threw himself down near the chute, pulled the cord hand over hand and brought the fabric within reach. Flipped open his pocket knife and slashed the material, cut a bandana square and tied it round his head. He adjusted the drape of the headdress so it covered his bandaged eye.

He coughed. Bruised lungs. Might have cracked some ribs.

More blood in his mouth. He tongued his gums. A missing tooth.

Supposition: the roof hatch misfired. Should have blown clear soon as he triggered the ejection sequence, but maybe the rim charges didn’t detonate. His seat must have punched it clear as it propelled up and out. Lucky he didn’t lose his legs. Lucky his head wasn’t wrenched clean off.

Death Valley.

Tough choice. Head east and cross the Armagosa Range and back into Nevada. Or head west and enter the Panamints, hope to find blacktop road, an easy route into southern California. Either journey would require superhuman endurance.

Best shot at survival would be to locate the wreckage of the plane and wait for SAR extraction.

He unholstered his Beretta, blew dust from the weapon, checked the magazine and chamber.

He slung the survival vest over his shoulder and began to walk.

‘I hates the yankee nation and eveything they do.

I hates the declaration of independence, too.

I hates the glorious union, ’tis dripping with our blood.

I hates the striped banner, and fit it all I could.’

High dunes. Treacherous, sliding sand. He followed contours as best he could.

His balance was shot. Lurching like a drunk. Each time he looked down the ground flipped up and smacked him in the face like he’d stood on a garden rake. He resolved to stare straight ahead. Distant dunes gave a fixed reference point. Best treat them like an artificial horizon gimbal monitored during a night mission. Imagine he was watching the tilt of a line marker by the eerie green glow of an EVS terrain scope, alert for any pitch deviation. Pretend he was strapped inside his skull, steering his body like a plane.

He felt dizzy and traumatised. The adrenalin rush, the near-miss euphoria he felt when he woke and discovered he had survived the crash, had ebbed and been replaced by all-pervading fatigue that robbed his limbs of strength.

He stopped and caught his breath.

He could barely see. He blinked perspiration from his remaining eye.

Sweat burned his split scalp and empty, swollen socket as if someone had poured vinegar on the wound.

Utter exhaustion. His hand kept straying towards his bicep pocket as if it were seeking out morphine of its own volition.

Time to rest.

He made for the highest dune, the best vantage point to sit and survey his surroundings.

A parched wind blowing from the east. He closed his eyes and turned his face to catch the breeze.

Awful, last-man-on-Earth silence.

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

One of the tough-guy mottos pinned to the wall of the gymnasium annexed by Hancock and his clique of steroidal muscle freaks each morning. Planet Fit, Temple Hills, just off Andrews AFB. They bellowed encouragement and motivational abuse, buckled powerlifter belts, added plate after plate. Vein-popping exertion. Chalked their hands, struggled to bench their own bodyweight, pumped to collapse. They swigged protein shakes, admired their ripped musculature in wall mirrors, daydreamed of acing special forces induction.

Pain is just weakness leaving your body.

Time to put that Spartan ideology in motion.

Remember the warrior creed:

‘I will always place the mission first. I will never quit. I will never accept defeat. I will never leave a fallen comrade.’

You are still in the field, still combat effective. You’ve been tasked. You have a mission to accomplish.

He reached the top of the dune, stumbled to regain balance. He drew his pistol and fumbled the gun. A clumsy Weaver stance, squinting down the sight with his remaining eye, taking aim at vast nothing.

‘Picked the wrong guy to fuck with,’ he shouted, addressing desolate terrain. ‘I’m ready. Been ready my whole goddamned life.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘Give it your best damn shot. Come on. I’ll break you. I’ll take anything you got.’

He dropped his arms and laughed at himself.

Losing it. Totally losing it.

He stowed his pistol, clumsily slotted the weapon into the passive retention holster. Then his legs gave out. He rolled onto his back and lay there a long while, hand pressed to his pounding head.

Merciless fucking sun.

He yearned for nightfall.

He got to his feet and forced himself to walk.

Lost track of time. His Suunto watch was smashed. The cracked LCD display projected weird, scrambled digits like it was alien tech.

The sun was still high. Felt like it had been noon for ever.

A chunk of wreckage.

Sheet metal protruded from the sand.

He gripped the panel and dragged it free.

An ejection hatch. One of the portals blown clear when the egress sequence triggered. Riveted steel streaked black by the detonation of explosive bolts.

He thought it over.

Implication: he was walking along the debris trail. Detritus scattered during the plane’s terminal descent. His current bearing would bring him to the crash site. A chance to inspect the fuselage. Because the debrief would begin the moment he boarded the Chinook. Trenchman would demand an immediate sitrep. Hand him bottled water, then clamp earphones to his head so they could communicate above the rotor-roar.
What’s the status of the aircraft? What’s the condition of the bomb?

Seventy yards north-west: an ejector seat. The seat had fallen out of the sky, rolled down an incline and come to rest at the foot of a dune.

He slid down the slope.

A chute had been balled and stashed beneath the chair frame. Another airman survived the crash.

He cupped his hands:

‘Hey. Sound off.’

Pause.

‘Anyone?’

A white scrap of garbage at his feet. He tugged it from the sand.

A torn water sachet.

Someone impulsive. Someone without the smarts to conserve water.

He crumpled the plastic in his fist and tossed it aside.

‘Lieutenant Early? You out there?’

Lieutenant Early. Youngest of the crew.

Hancock stumbled to the crest of a dune and sank to his knees. He shielded his eye from the sun’s glare and scanned the horizon for any sign of the crewman.

Hoarse bellow:

‘Hey. Early?’

A discarded flight helmet. He picked it up, turned it in his hands. Undamaged.

Blurred footprints heading out into the wilderness, away from the plane, away from any kind of help.

He thought it over. Head for the wreckage, or pursue Early into deep desert?

Poor kid must be terrified. Alone in the wilderness. Struggling across the dunes, mile after mile, head full of panic and fear. He wouldn’t last long.

Hancock unholstered his pistol and fired a signal shot.

One final shout:

‘Kid, you out there?’

No sound but a rising, mournful wind. Sand blew from the crests of dunes like smoke. The desert transformed to a smouldering, infernal hellscape.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

But:

I will always place the mission first. I will never quit.

Best find the plane.

He threw the helmet aside and headed north.

A column of smoke on the horizon. Hard to judge distance.

Black fumes. A fuel fire. Must be the remains of
Liberty Bell
.

Each crewman carried a radio which could switch to transponder mode and act as a homing beacon. Geostationary SAR satellites would pick up the signal. Just set it beeping and wait for rescue. But if comms were down, they would need to make themselves visible from the air. Surest chance of deliverance would be to reach aircraft debris.

Downside: the bomb might be damaged. Radiotoxic spill. The core assembly might be split open, projecting lethal gamma radiation. He might reach the wreckage and find himself walking among scattered fragments of fissile material. Sub-critical chunks of plutonium, plutonium oxide, uranium tamper. A calculated risk. If he stayed within the vicinity of the fuselage he would catch a dose, but any incoming SAR team would surely find him.

It was his best shot.

He kept walking, because it was better to act than sit on his ass.

‘Three hundred thousand Yankees

Is stiff in southern dust.

We got three hundred thousand

Before they conquered us.

They died of Southern fever

And southern steel and shot,

I wish there were three million

Instead of what we got.’

West Montana. A forest clearing. Frost huddled beneath rain-lashed tarpaulin. Water dripped from leaves and branches. The ground turned to mud.

She shivered and rocked. Exhaustion put her in a weird, dissociative state. She looked down at her hands. They seemed to belong to someone else.

Major Coplin crouched over a brushwood fire and brewed nettle tea. He folded leaves into a mess tin and stirred with a knife.

A week-long SERE exercise: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.

Major Doug Coplin, her instructor. SEMPER PARATUS on his forearm, and a three-day beard. Taciturn loner. She wanted to ask him about the fingers missing from his left hand, but his manner didn’t invite conversation.

‘Got to adapt your thinking to your environment,’ he said, watching water simmer and steam. ‘That’s the key. Example. People habituated to arid terrain can sniff out water. They become alert to the scent of oasis vegetation. Yucca, cacti, carried on the desert air. So use your nose. Use every sense you got. And above all, use you head.’

Rippling heat haze. Endless desert.

Frost limped through dunes leaving a meandering trail of step-drag footprints in the sand.

She stopped and sniffed the air. An unplaceable scent carried on the breeze.

Brief, olfactory misattribution. Flowers. The heart-tugging hope of a verdant, tree-fringed oasis.

The aroma soured and grew strong. Burning plastic. Spilt aviation fuel. Ruin and incineration.

A column of black smoke unfurled behind a distant rise.